


On Nirnroots

by nostalgic_breton_girl



Category: Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Alchemy, Gen, Nirnroot, and julianne traven, as good a scientific discussion as you're getting from a literature student, featuring nirnroot headcanons, my oblivion arch-mage, tamrielic natural history, who must not be confused with julienne traven
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:54:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23876500
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nostalgic_breton_girl/pseuds/nostalgic_breton_girl
Summary: This discussion of the nature of Nirnroots was sent, in 4E 204, to the College of Winterhold, the Arcane University, and several of the practising alchemists in Skyrim, along with the following missive:Dear ----,Please find attached a notice concerning our studies on the plant known as the Nirnroot. This field of study has been largely ignored since the work by Sinderion in the early Fourth Era, but it is our belief that this plant contains untapped potential, and will be an interesting focus for alchemical study going forward.We write to you asking if you might provide some of the funding and/or resources necessary for our expeditions, the details of which may be found in the final paragraph, and hope that you will consider such expeditions worthy of your attention and support. If this is beyond your resources, we hope at least that you will make public the information that we have thus far gathered, so that the Nirnroot may be brought back once again from obscurity.With all our gratitude,Julienne and Marcurio Traven
Comments: 5
Kudos: 7





	On Nirnroots

Julianne Traven was known for her contributions to many areas of magical scholarship, and her fame among students of the arcane was, and still is, well-merited. If there is one thing, however, which seems to have been undeservedly forgotten, it is her work, with the alchemist Sinderion, on the nature of Nirnroots.

The alchemists of today will all be able to tell you about Nirnroots, and may even be able to sell you a sample or two; and even the layman may well know a thing or two about the relatively uncommon plant, given the unmistakeable sound that it produces: a sound that is variously described as interesting, comforting, loud, and infuriating. However, on my travels throughout Skyrim, which is home to a good number of practising alchemists, I have found only one who connects the names Sinderion and Julianne Traven with the Nirnroot, and that is Avrusa Sarethi, who actually knew Sinderion, almost two centuries ago.

The Nirnroot Missives, two similar papers produced on the topic in the late Third Era, are most of the information which remains on those experiments in which Julianne, in her capacity as a member of the Council of Mages, assisted Sinderion. (The latter was not granted official funding by the Imperial Alchemy Symposium, and it is said to have been a great regret to Julianne that she could not convince her fellows otherwise.) The last document on which we might draw are some brief notes accumulated in the field by Julianne Traven herself.

It is now two hundred years after this pioneering research, and to touch once again on a long-forgotten and obscure subject may well seem like a wasted effort. However, it is with Avrusa Sarethi’s blessing, and a wealth of new knowledge, that we, Julienne Traven and Marcurio, seek to put together some of our own notes on the topic, in the hope of summarising and adding to scholarship in the field.

* * *

The Nirnroot is a hardy plant, with a yet-to-be-determined lifespan, that is always found growing near assorted water sources – that is, both salt water and fresh water, both stagnant and flowing water, favouring boggy ground and relatively drier soil in apparently equal proportion, with a preference for sandy and ashy soils. In our area of study, that is, mainland Skyrim, and the island of Solstheim, we have remarked that Solstheim is a particular preference for the plant: which is curious, as there exist no records of it growing there prior to the eruption of Red Mountain, in 4E 5. (This detail quite probably concerns the preference for ashy soil; the migration of the plant to Solstheim was possibly carried out as sea traffic increased from mainland Skyrim and Morrowind, if it was not present there before.)

The plant does not have a particularly remarkable physical appearance, being low-growing, and non-flowering. Its leaves are long, thin and jagged, and a typical Nirnroot may have anywhere between four and ten leaves. The most remarkable properties of the plant are: firstly, the sound it makes, a distinct ringing that rises and falls in volume, and then ceases for a number of seconds; and secondly, by night, its blue-green glow.

While the Nirnroot is not critically rare, it must be noted that it is uncommon, and that our specimens tended to be found far apart from each other, rather than in clusters. We never found two Nirnroots growing within thirty feet of each other (which, it must be said, made our journeys rather long at times).

It is important here to compare our own observations with those notes provided by Julianne Traven and Sinderion. The three drawings recovered all show a plant with four leaves, similar in appearance to the modern Nirnroot; they are not in colour, but the coloration is described as ‘dark green to sea green’. This possibly refers to a darker colour than the presentation of the modern Nirnroot, but it is subjective and difficult to determine. The glow is described in a similar fashion.

Sinderion made extensive reference to the notes of the early scholar Chivius Regelliam, and it is important to note here that these notes refer to the glow as ‘yellow’. This matter will be discussed in more depth later, concerning the evolution of the Nirnroot.

The other significant point to mention, from Julianne and Sinderion’s notes, is that the sound of the Nirnroot is described as ‘quiet and subtle’. While the modern description can, as has been noted, vary, it would be difficult to imagine anyone describing it as subtle. The inference that may be made from this is that over the past two centuries, the noise of the Nirnroot has become noticeably louder.

* * *

The Nirnroot obviously derives its name from the celestial body on which we live. While this study does not aim to be etymological, it might be useful to dwell on this topic a little. The name ‘Nirnroot’ has been in use since at least the First Era, with the earliest known written record referring only to a ‘green wetland plant’; more detail is found a little later, in the notes of Chivius Regelliam, as has been mentioned.

While many plants bear names which range from excessive flatteries to outright misnomers, the very particular characteristics of the Nirnroot, compared with most if not all other plants, may be the reason for it meriting a strong and direct connexion with the planet we inhabit. Whether it does have some inherent meaning therein, or whether indeed it may have some connexion with the Divines or creation legends, is yet to be determined. Certainly it does seem a perfectly unusual plant, and one which most definitely deserves more interest than it has attracted, in more than a thousand years of alchemical scholarship.

* * *

One question which many alchemists pose, and which only two have been able to answer, is that concerning the reproduction of the Nirnroot. It is difficult, nigh on impossible, to cultivate inside, and similarly difficult to cultivate out of doors, but Sinderion managed to cultivate several plants (though not easily), and the aforementioned Avrusa Sarethi is known in the Rift for her Nirnroot farm. She claims to be the only person, other than Sinderion, who knows how to grow the plant from a seed, and we are inclined to believe this to be the case. Her knowledge of the matter extends to the conditions of the soil, the materials with which to feed it, and likely subconscious magical assistance, given the nature of the plant.

That the plants reproduce by seeding might come as a surprise to those who, having investigated Nirnroots, have found no obvious place in which seeds might be produced, nor any bunched occurrence of the growing plant. The seeds are very small and delicate, and located close to the base of the plant; they are not produced on a regular basis, and even Avrusa Sarethi has yet to locate a method in their production. There is no evidence for Nirnroots also reproducing by means of plantlets (copies of the plant which are grown on the body of the plant itself, and later become detached). It is to be assumed that seeds are dispersed by wind or by animals, and that the further away from the parent plant they are carried, the more successful their development.

* * *

As has been noted, Nirnroots are uncommon (despite their relative fame), and indeed, Sinderion made the claim that they were on the road to extinction, though without any clear motivator other than their relative scarcity, compared with the records of Chivius Regelliam. It is possible he exaggerated this as a means of earning funding, but it is clear from the records that Nirnroots did indeed at one point suffer a period of serious decline, at least before their radical evolution which apparently altered their nature. (Full details may be found in the Nirnroot Missive). Partly due no doubt to his efforts, the Nirnroot no longer appears to be especially threatened.

Something which is yet to be explored fully is the theory that their distinctive noise contributed to their survival. It is plausible, but unproven, that predators may be deterred by the sound of the plant, and so those which are louder are less likely to be eaten or otherwise damaged. Certainly this theory would explain the apparent change in volume over the last two centuries, if they had developed to prefer a louder sound. In our travels we did see some evidence of both ruminants and predatory animals seeming to avoid the plants, though this may of course have just been coincidence.

Another area of exploration would be the mechanism by which the Nirnroot produces this sound. No other plant, of course, has ever been recorded as vocal. Dissection of plant samples has not of yet revealed a particular structure that might produce a sound. It should also here be noted that Nirnroots frequently continue to produce a sound, albeit more quietly, after uprooting; the occurrence of this phenomenon seems to vary according to damage caused to the plant, so it does seem as if there is a physical structure yet to be located. The sound decreases in volume, eventually either dissipating, or becoming too quiet to hear, after anything between three days and a week, and often coinciding with disintegration of the plant matter, if the sample is not stored appropriately.

* * *

The main interest in Nirnroots is, of course, currently in the field of Alchemy. While it can be extremely difficult to extract the qualities of the Nirnroot in any combination, the Third Era notes imply that it was at that time nigh on impossible. Sinderion managed to use it to craft his Elixir of Exploration, which, while possessing a good variety of effects at high concentrations, has never since been replicated, and so was ever of dubitable use. At that time, it was considered to possess only unique qualities, and was not successfully combined with another, more mundane ingredient until relatively recently. Sinderion notes that, without considerable alchemical skill, a potion crafted with Nirnroot alone will deteriorate one’s health and fatigue a small amount, and that consuming the raw plant is potentially dangerous; the known effects of the plant now reflect this to a great extent, although it has also been discovered that they can with a bit of luck be used in a potion of Invisibility, and may have an effect on magicka reserves. Whether these qualities were merely undiscovered in the Third Era, or whether the nature of the Nirnroot is still changing, is disputed.

To wit, the effects of the Elixir of Exploration were to fortify one’s health and fatigue, give one better night vision, and to fortify assorted magic- and non-magic-related skills. Our experiments have not yet managed to garner any success by combining a Nirnroot with another plant known to have any one of these effects. While it is not the case that Nirnroots cannot be used in combination with any other ingredient, it is certainly the case that they are in many ways alchemically unique, and likely have much untapped potential; it may also be useful to try to find out how Sinderion crafted his Elixir of Exploration, as no records of the process have survived to this day.

* * *

The final section of our present notes concerns the Crimson Nirnroot. This is what will be the focus of our immediate future research, and which, furthermore, Sinderion was working on before his untimely demise. If you have not heard of the Crimson Nirnroot, be reassured by the fact that nor had Sinderion, before an unusually intrepid explorer brought him a sample: its obscurity is due to its apparently exclusive habitat, that is, Blackreach.

Blackreach is a network of caverns located beneath a good part of Skyrim, accessible with some difficulty through a small number of the surviving external ruins in the region. It is primarily inhabited by Falmer and chaurruses, and contains numerous sources of water. Few plants grow or can grow in the darkness, and it is mainly fungi which are found there; however, there is a conspicuous presence of a certain variety of Nirnroot, which is apparently identical to the daylight version in all but colour.

Sinderion noted in his field journal that the Crimson Nirnroot is in symbiosis with the fungi of Blackreach, using them as a source of water, though the plant still has an affinity to real water sources, being most plentiful around the underground streams and waterfalls. He also notes that it has a “vastly shortened lifespan”, though given he spent a relatively short time studying them, it is possible that this was an initial hypothesis. Our own studies revealed that the Crimson Nirnroot can, with some skill, be combined with the ordinary Nirnroot in a potion, suggesting that they are to some extent a separate species.

Our visit to Blackreach was relatively brief, and we have made plans to return there, and continue where Sinderion’s work left off. Some things to consider will be the darkness of their habitat, the conditions of the soil, and the apparent lack of predators. The darkness would seem to hint at the change in colour: after all, most plants above ground tend to be green, but those in deeper and darker places often exhibit a more demure colour. The soil conditions are most unusual: Blackreach is not ashy, and nor does it have a good deal of the plant matter that is present around rivers – rather, it is a dry and dusty soil, composed primarily of erosion of the bedrock. Whether this, to the Nirnroot, exhibits similar qualities to the ash of Red Mountain, etc, is yet to be determined. The lack of predators is something which may or may not have had an effect: after all, the Nirnroots of Blackreach are just as loud as those above ground, which may influence the development of our earlier theory on their recent evolution.

* * *

It is with some hesitation, given Sinderion and Julianne’s lukewarm reception, that we embark on this study. For such a ubiquitously known plant, the Nirnroot remains beyond what most alchemists are willing to study. Certainly it will be a challenge. If we can go even a small step further than Sinderion himself, then we shall consider that a success. We intend, therefore, to return to Blackreach, first of all; and then to make a comparison study with those plants found above ground, perhaps also with the variety found on Solstheim. This study will hopefully encompass all of the areas we have discussed in this piece, and contribute to a topic of scholarship which is long overdue an update. 

**Author's Note:**

> Sources used for this work were the two Nirnroot Missives produced by Sinderion for the Imperial Alchemy Symposium, and Sinderion's Field Journal, found with his body in Blackreach.


End file.
